Tuesday, June 5, 2012

A Taste of Finland at New Port Mall with Sara La Fountain

Megaworld Lifestyle Malls in partnership with Asian Food Channel brought American-Finnish celebrity Chef Sara La Fountain at Eastwood Mall last June 3 and at Newport Mall last June 4. It was such a blessing to get a spot on this eventful night at Newport Mall yesterday.

Sara La Fountain, the stunning host of New Scandinavian Cooking of Asian Food Channel is a chef, model, entrepreneur, author, columnist, model, and blogger. She trained in The Culinary Institute of America in New York, but had chosen to stay in her hometown in Finland where she’s become a familiar face on TV with hosting jobs in Avec Sara and Perfect Day. Even though she’s a celebrity in Finland, she may be familiar on our shores as she has been a model for several brands including Puma.

Apart from being a media personality, Chef La Fountain has a catering service and a cooking school. She also writes on her blog, Passion for Fashion & Food, and for columns in different Finnish publications. Extending her writing repertoire, she won the prestigious Gourmand Cookbook Award in the “Best First Cookbook” category for her first book, A La Sara. Another book she came out with is Perfect Day, which shows recipes on Finnish dishes inspired by the seasons in Finland, Chef La Fountain is an expert in Scandinavian cooking. To give a little bit of background on the cuisine, a lot of the ingredients in Scandinavian cuisine comes from the sea, lake, and even the ground.

Food in this part of Europe includes fish, meat, beets, potatoes, cucumbers, and fruits which are broiled, baked, and smoked. In history, this cuisine was food for the Vikings. Salting or smoking their meat and fish were traditional ways of preserving their food, which remains to be a practice to this day.

On that night, Chef Sara shared three recipes and a few points on how to prepare Scandinavian cuisine. I love the way she told us how her grandmother influenced her into being an adventurous eater and eventually in to cooking traditional and gourmet Scandinavian dishes. Would you imagine, she had her first oyster when she was only four, hmm, beat that!

Shrimp Skagen with Dark Sweet Bread was first on the list. This refreshing regular Scandinavian snack is spot on. Can be likened to shrimp salad with mayo dressing and lots of dills, however, what makes it true Scandinavian is their horse-radish, something like a mustard but with a subtle kick that of a wasabi. What the heck, this definitely would be a hit even in my own kitchen. Yes, don't worry I will share the recipe to you and the rest of the dishes in my future post, with a few of my tweaks of course, I'm sure you will also love it.

Pytipannu, pronounced as pyu-tip-pan-na (the last syllable has a stress as in "cup") was also included in the demonstration. This is a traditional Finnish dish of potatoes, onions and other assorted fresh vegetables, diced and pan-fried with egg, pickled diced beetroot, sour pickled gherkins and capers. It's basically a mix of everything probably would have been left on the fridge served as an entree.
Finally, she showed us how to prepare Finnish French Toast with Wild Berries. Lucky me, I had to finally have some raspberries and strawberries, thank God for summer fruits, even made special in reduced syrup over a French or Nordic bread.with cold whipped cream.

Of course how can we say we had a taste of Finland if we weren't able to savor the dishes that teased us.

If you think, all I did was watching and eating, you are so wrong, I did a lot of beating too or whipping up. I volunteered to be one of the contestants to Chef Sara's whipping the cream game. There were three of us, and guess what I was one of the winners. I used up all my energy left to win it, and what do I get- a whopping gift form Chef Sara herself, which will be shipped from Finland to my home. YEY! Amazing!

On the same event, I was also had the chance to check out the Fiddler on the Groove, the You tube sensation, who plays electro-acoustic violin, Bryson Andres.

Also had the opportunity to chat with Chef Jonas Ng who also did a few demo on using the grill of Indesit Ariston stove, and be accompanied by Angelo of AFC.

About Me

A foodie, a mom to four. a wife, a baker, a business owner and a friend to many!
Method to my madness:
1. Frequent visits to places I love.
2. Fill up my home with lovely memories were eating is the medium.
3. Write my mind out!
For collabs, inquiries and reviews you may email me at gastronomybyjoy@yahoo.com or send me an SMS at 632 9176318186